The report identifies the clear benefits for older citizens in use of the Internet enabling them to save money and effort by picking and choosing online when shopping, and reducing the need to travel. A lot of the content is repeated and I lost track of the number of mentions of the 5.7 million people who are offline, but on the positive side there figures such as that 10% of Internet users in the UK are over 65 and that they actually spend longer on the Internet than any other age group.

The report has also split the older population into three groups – ‘traditionalists’, ‘hesitators’ and ‘highly supported’, with the unfortunate recognition that the traditionalists at 43% are probably going to present the greatest challenge to get online.

Whilst the government is obviously keen to get as many people using self-service as possible, the carrot is that the technology also extends into life-long learning along with increased independence and well-being by the use of the communication tools.

Post navigation

2 Responses to Getting on

13 mentions of the 5.7m figure is quite a lot, but it’s a shocking and very important stat – nearly two thirds of all offliners are over 65 years old…

Also, to be clear, we were actually saying that the 1.4m ‘Highly Supported’ will be the most difficult group to help online – over 75 years old (just 23% of over 75 year olds are online, compared to 57% of 65 to 74 year olds), most likely to be living in sheltered housing and more likely to have declining physical and/or cognitive capabilities.

They are also more likely to prefer or need supported / intermediated access.

Earlier posts

Earlier posts

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,887 other followers

About me

The blogger is Mick Phythian, a Research Associate at De Montfort University in Leicester, U.K. and former ICT Manager at Ryedale District Council in North Yorkshire, England. He was also a founder member of the Local CIO Council and regional Chair of Socitm.

Any opinions expressed on this weblog are purely those of the author.

He is not the Great Emancipator! The Great Emancipator was President Abraham Lincoln. The blog is so-called because some people perceive e-government, transformational government or, heaven forbid, government to be the emancipator of us all...